Debra Marquart was touring with her band, The Look, when she contracted a flu virus that would leave her bedridden for three days. While her band played the shows it had already committed to without a lead singer, Marquart’s band’s manager made a trek from the band’s base in the Fargo, N.D., area to care for her.

“I couldn’t sing and got really sick and I was feverish,” says Marquart, associate professor of English. “The band was in trouble because I sang about 95 percent of the material, so they would go day-to-day trying to cover a whole night of music. It was just a total disaster.”

But performing with the band wasn’t her biggest problem. Marquart had no health insurance. Her bill for an emergency room visit was $100 — but considering how small her cut of the band’s revenue was, she couldn’t afford to pay.

She never did.

“As a band, we would make around $1,000 per week,” she says. “There were usually seven or eight of us. We had to pay our agent 15 percent. Then it used to be about $200 for a motel. The road crew — our sound man and light man — usually got about $200 per week and then whatever was left over, we all divided. Even if we could have gotten health insurance, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it.”

Marquart says she remembers that trip to the emergency room.

Marquart says health issues requiring doctor visits were not a one time thing. In fact, Marquart says they were very common.

“If you get sick on the road, there’s no continuity,” she says. “You go from one doctor to another doctor to another doctor.”

For Marquart, making ends meet was always difficult while she was a touring musician, but an unexpected trip to the ER made it impossible. Unlike other professions, where health insurance is offered as a benefit, many independently funded musicians don’t have access to significantly less expensive group health care rates.

Recording artist Vic Chesnutt says he was lucky. Although he has had several medical emergencies that could have been financially devastating, he was fortunate enough to have medical insurance coverage paid for through a musician’s union and funded in part by his record label, Capitol Records.

“I had a kidney stone operation that would have cost probably $30,000, which would have left me destitute, and there was a suicide attempt that landed me in a hospital for a few weeks which would have cost $20,000 or $30,000,” Chesnutt says.

Chesnutt was fortunate enough to have insurance when a car accident at the age of 18 left him wheelchair-bound. Although he was covered at the time of his accident, Chesnutt has since been dropped from Capitol and has lost his insurance coverage. He says the continuing medical costs from his injury have become a major financial strain.

“My record company now, they don’t provide any health insurance at all,” he says. “I’m always on medication … to combat the effects of that spinal cord injury on my body, and it’s very expensive,” Chesnutt says. “Luckily, I’ve been pretty healthy lately, but there’s been times in the past when I’ve had a great deal of medical bills, and if it wasn’t for insurance, I would have been destitute.”

However, there may be a solution to Chesnutt’s financial problems. He is considering seeking assistance from Sweet Relief Musician’s Fund, a charity organization which gives grants to musicians in need of financial assistance due to health issues. Joanne Kablin, managing director for the Sweet Relief, says it can be nearly impossible for musicians to receive medical coverage.

“Musicians are a very diverse group,” Kablin says. “They are considered high risk. Some musicians aren’t out all the time, but music is a pretty tenuous profession, and people that have not had the opportunity to maintain their health or live in such a way that increases health risks … so it’s considered a high-risk profession like skateboarding.”

The fund was created in 1994 by Victoria Williams, a musician who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992. Several musicians and others involved in the industry combined their efforts to record a Victory Williams tribute album called “Sweet Relief: A Benefit For Victoria Williams.” As a result, they raised more than $20,000 for Williams, which helped pay for the treatments necessary to combat her disease.

Chesnutt has been involved with Sweet Relief before. An album full of his songs was recorded to help raise money for the fund, which Chesnutt says was an honor to record.

“A lot of really great and talented people were singing my songs, and that made me feel really good personally,” Chesnutt says. “That is really important because … our medical system is screwed up in this country, and it’s really hard to pay for medicine. It’s impossible for self-employed people to get medical insurance, so it’s great that my selfish little songs could help others get health care.”

Chesnutt says Sweet Relief has been a big help to a few of his personal friends.

“One of my friends who got aid from Sweet Relief, I think he simply would not have sought the medical help that he needed and he probably would have died sooner,” Chesnutt says. “He ended up dying anyway, but I think he would have died a lot sooner because he just couldn’t afford it. He couldn’t afford the medicine.”

Chesnutt says he thinks everyone should have access to health care benefits and is an advocate for universal health care. He says Sweet Relief helps to point out some of what he believes are the flaws in the U.S. health care system.

“The thing that can make it accessible to independent touring musicians, I think, is the same thing that should be done in America,” he says.

“I’m for universal health care. I think there are many things about the health care system that are broken. That inflates the cost of health care for everyone,” Chesnutt says.